Adam Rapoport has seen the light, when it comes to locally sourced meat.

A few Saturdays ago I dropped off my nine-year-old for a ­playdate on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. With a couple hours to kill, I wandered down to White Gold Butchers, one of those artisanal, eat-local, nose-to-tail shops where, I’m happy to report, there was nothing at all healthyish going on.

Big slabs of nicely marbled porterhouses rested in a glass display case, two-pound hunks of beef short rib sat on a butcher block waiting to be broken down, and impossibly golden-brown rotisserie chickens preened on a marble countertop, still impaled on a long Game of Thrones–quality skewer.

What makes White Gold, and other shops like it, so good is the meat. You know exactly where it comes from and who raised it.

Not that I always cared. For years I’d been a steadfast resister to the locally sourced, grass-fed beef movement. If I was going to pay $28 a pound, I wanted my rib eye more marbled than a block of Carrara. Carbon footprint be damned; give me big-ranch, grain-fed beef. Give me lush, rich steaks that I can bring to a crisp, crunchy finish on my fiery-hot Weber grill.

Photo by Alex Lau

Butchers at White Gold tying up a roast.

But at some point, that movement became a lot harder to resist. I’d stop by Dickson’s Farmstand Meats in Chelsea Market for a couple of rosy bone-in pork chops jacketed in milky-white fat, and I’d find myself staring longingly at the beautifully gnarled, 32-day-dry-aged strip loin from upstate New York. And when the woman at the register would ask, “Is that all?” I’d ­eyeball the freezer case, hem and haw, and then ask for a why-the-heck-not quart of chicken stock made with trimmings from all those beautiful cage-free birds. And, yes, why not throw in some Berkshire pork rillettes, too?

It’s no longer about making a statement; it’s about eating really, really well. I’m pretty sure I am going to fire up my grill every single weekend this summer. I’ll pull up to 8 Hands Farm on the North Fork of Long Island, where I can choose from a ­gorgeous selection of farm-raised lamb and pork.

And a few hours later, I’ll be standing at my grill, looking out over the Long Island Sound. I’m sure I’ll have gotten my charcoal chimney going a tad too late—I mean, what’s the point of ­cocktail hour if you’re busy prepping and grilling the entire time? And so, when those heritage-breed pork chops hit the grill, it’ll be all but pitch-black out. I’ll reach for my iPhone and flick on that nuclear-powered flashlight so I can glean some sense of what’s going on. Sure, I might not be able to see what I’m cooking, but at least I’ll know that its quality is top-notch.